What's on your ballot?

[Sheherezade]

I was wondering today what's hot on everyone's upcoming elections.

Here, we have the showdown between the two parties highlighted in the Governor's race and the Senate race. For once, there is a stark difference between the choices on almost every issue. We also have an interesting Board of Education race between an incumbent hell-bent on getting intelligent design in to the curriculum and a challenger specifically put up to block that happening. We have a cigarette tax proposed to pay for art museums and parks (Phillip Morris has been fronting money to campagin against that. )

What's going on in your state? The election isn't far off. I figure I best start educating myself about the lesser known issues and choices.

[SuzySunshine]

We too have a Governor's race and a pretty heated Senate race, both races ahve gotten negative recently and I'm just ready for the ads to be over.

I'm a republican, have no problem admitting that but I have issues with both of the republican candidates in this race as well as the democrats. I'm very tempted to vote for the independent governor candidate but feel like I would "wasting" my vote.

The local Rochester issue that has everyone up in arms is the DM&E railroad expansion and the UofM-Rochester. I'm totally against the railroad expansion but have mixed feelings about the UMR.

Obviously I need to do some reading and make some decisions in the next two weeks.

Re: What's on your ballot?

We have a cigarette tax proposed to pay for art museums and parks (Phillip Morris has been fronting money to campagin against that. )

I'll be interested to hear how that one pans out. That's how the whole Gateway project was funded. The "sin tax" was on all cigarettes and liquor and paid for the city's portion of Jacobs Field, Gund Arena, & I think Cleveland Browns Stadium. It was put into effect when I was 18 or so, and I remember not understanding the 'sin' connection. I thought it was syntax.

We don't have a lot of highly contentious things here, largely b/c the left doesn't have very strong footing in KS. We do have a democratic governor and she's up for reelection, but she's well liked. A few school board seats - and us dems are trying bit by bit to get the intelligent design folks off. This is my first KS election - so I'm interested to see how small the dem turn out really is.

[SuzySunshine]

Jenn, the AG race is Kansas seems to be really heated. The guy that is up for re-election is the one that wanted to force Planned Parenthood to release abortion names, isn't it?

DH and I were so glad we didn't live there anymore when the school board mess happened last year.

The ballot issue guide is so think that they sent it out in two parts. I will shamefully admit that I haven't kept up on issues here as I did before moving because I wasn't sure if we were staying here. Guess this year would be a good time to change, huh?

We have a governor's race with the usual politician incumbent and equally lame-o challenger (must change attitude before voting). For contentious, we have a ballot initiative for underage abortion notification. Property tax increase for local schools (actually bringing back one that sunset last year). Hmmm...oh yeah, a spending cap initiative similar to one in Colorado that really screwed up the budget there. And judging from the ballot guide, many many more!

[DCJenn]

We have a pretty interesting Governor's race with some real characters running. Republican incumbant who has really pissed off a lot of people with some of the decisions he's made- most recently he's been pushing for a "Trans-Texas Corridor" which people of all stripes seem to hate. It's basically a highway from Mexico to Oklahoma. Then there's the Dem who seems like a decent guy. (the old saying "A Democrat in Texas is a Republican anywhere else" does hold true most of the time) THEN we have Kinky Friedman running as an Independent AND the current comptroller who also declared as an Independent and then there's the Libertarian guy. Kinky Friedman really had generated a lot of interest until he dismissed some racist stuff he'd done onstage as just part of a performance. (which it may have been but these are times when that's pretty much uncool)

So, things look at best unsettled at the moment.

The most interesting part of the Texas elections is that Tom Delay's name has to stay on the ballot since he dropped out so late which will require people to have to write in any Republicans name. (apparently the electronic ballots require that the name of whomever is running be spelled out by letter). Which means that it's likely that the guy who lost his seat when Delay did the redistricting will win Delay's old seat.

That's it for South Texas.

Not too much else in the way of issues this time.

jenn